We know
already that gamification is one important tool in the business field, but what
about other areas?
Let’s go to the real world.
Gamification can be applied to everything, but
everything is not interesting and will not leave a real impact to the society.
We are
going to show you 3 different examples of “social gamification” that give
important impact to the world, let’s begin with Pain Squad app.
1. Cancer
treatment is a complex process, patients have to take strong medicine and tell their symptoms every day to know the effectiveness of it, while they are feeling
the pain from cancer. Pain Squad is a great application that applies gamification
to give purpose to patients and data to doctors. It is an excellent solution to
engage the patients and record data daily and offer a better treatment for
them. We are sure that this app or similar app is going to use in the majority
of hospitals around the world.
2. Our second
example is FreeRice, giving a solution to the world
hunger, one of the world’s biggest problem, people dying from starvation.
FreeRice uses a quiz game to give 10 grains of rice to these people and
sponsors of the website pay for it. It has been a huge success and the results
show it: “To date, FreeRice has donated 6100 metric TONS of rice, consisting of
93 billion grains of rice and enough to feed 10 million people”
3. New Yorkblood center is our third example, it allows donors to earn points with each
blood donation and they can exchange these points with a wide array of rewards,
offering everything from food to car parts. Moreover, they implemented different ways to
earn points as referrals or competitions with other donors. This can be one
more reason to donate blood or can be the excuse to donate more often than
before.
As we could
see, gamification is not just for increasing revenue in your businesses, it can
also SAVE LIVES around the world.
If you think this is incredible, read the next post, it will blow your mind.
There are examples of gamification everywhere in our daily lives and many brands are integrating game mechanics in unique and compelling ways all with the purpose of increase sales, user engagement, return on investment, data quality, speed of process, and improve learning. Like video games, business gamification uses elements like points, achievements, levels, leaderboards, missions and contests to drive desired behaviors. Below, you will find examples of websites and apps that successfully utilize gamification to foster closer relationships with customers.
First, lets speak about Teleflora, a US florist. This company gamified its entire store by using power reviews’ social loyalty scheme. Teleflora offers points to users for completing some specific actions such as reviews, comments, answering other customer questions or sharing and posting on Facebook. As customers accumulates more and more points, they are rewarded with badges that identify them as a key influencer, and then a leaderboard shows the top influencers. Following this social program, Teleflora noticed a 105% increased in Facebook traffic and a conversion rate improved by 92%.
The well-kown cloud storage supplier, Dropbox also used gamification on its platform by offering additional storage space to users who complete certain tasks. A free account gives you access to 2GB of storage, but you can earn an extra 250MB just by taking a tour of Dropbox’s services. You can also earn 125M more if you connect your account to either Twitter or Facebook, following Dropbox on Twitter or leaving feedback. Moreover, the biggest rewards can be earned breferring friends; indeed users will receive 500MB for each referral up to a maximum of 16GB.
Another example is LinkedIn who encourage users to complete and maintain accurate profiles by using a progress bar to show you how far along you are in completing your profile. This small feature has proven to be useful for companies in the way that it encourages customer to give more personal data.
In 2011, Nike created an online game in which players had to help athletes stay warm while they trained outside in the cold. Users competed for a trip to meet one of the athletes. But this is not just for fun, the website allowed users to buy the new Nike winter clothing worn by each of the athletes. With Nike+, the brand allows users to log physical activity using mobile app or other Nike gear. It rewards users with NikeFuel, the word Nike uses to describe points. Users also can share accomplishments with friends and with other Nike+members. As they earn more NikeFuel, users unlock awards, trophies and surprises.
Foursquare enables users to "check in" in various places and share their experiences with others, rewarding them for doing so. Users received special deals such as discount from restaurants or retailers. With Foursquare you can also ask for a "mayorship": if you check in at a given place enough times, you can become its "mayor", which can bring with it its own set of privileges, such as a special parking place.
Samsung’s social loyalty programuses gamification to recognize and empower the company’s most passionate fans. Users earn points, level up, unlock badges and gain entry into contests and promotions by performing behaviors such as watching videos, commenting on articles, reviewing products and participating in user-generated Q&As. Top users appear on a leaderboard, and an activity stream keeps users up to date on site activities.
There are numerous other examples that we could cite, indeed, business gamification is becoming a strategy for a growing number of companies. In this article we talk about business gamification, however it can be found in other field such as education or marketing. Moreover, in the near future, we can imagine that it will be our whole everyday life that will become a kind of giant game, with more and more applications of gamification. If you want to have an idea of what might be our "future gamificated life", have a look to this short video :)
After reading our first introduction blog
of gamification, you may get some broad concept of what gamification is about.
Today our Gamificaters are going to give you some examples of gamification in
practice for different places. There are three main categories, where
gamification adds value. And these are external, internal, and behavior change
context.
1.External
And here it means external to the firm or the
organization that you're in. So these are applications of gamification for
customers or for potential customers in areas like marketing & sales and customer
engagement. For example, in order to encourage people to visit your website,
most of the companies will choose point system, leader board, from which you
might gain rewards from the company according to your frequent visit and
participation on-line. We’ll talk more about this kind of application in our next posts.
2.Internal
As you might guess, internal context is about applications
of gamification to people, who are in your company already, like Employees. Gamification
can involve people to participate and contribute more efforts in a joyful way.
3.Behavior change
You had similar
situations before? Maybe you already know you should take exercises everyday to
keep fit, but it’s hard, right?
Gamification
provides the motivation to help you change that behavior, get rid of this laziness
and finally form a good habit. For example, gaining a no speeding lottery could
be a fantastic motivation for drivers to slow down. If you are not speeding
then you might win a lottery, and the money is from those are caught speeding.
Are you curious
about our interesting and funny applications of gamification?
Do you want to
play a “game” with us, gamificaters? Join us and get your REWARD!!!!!
Please feel free
to make comments and give us your suggestions, we’ll keep you updated about our
series of gamification. Your feedback is more than welcome !!!!
In order to start a blog correctly we have decided to begin with a
clear definition of this confusing term.
Gamification uses game mechanics
and dynamics to create game-like engagements in a non-game context. It’s the use
of game design principles (e.g., gaming psychology or game play scripts) to
engage individuals into areas such education, work, community participation or
fitness. Gamification is not a game, as players don’t really know they are
playing a game. It is created through a set of tools or incentives to achieve
goals, rather than mare entertainment. (Michael Wu, 2012)
Although incentives are good game mechanics, as people have been
using them for centuries, they do not constitute gamification by itself. Grades
or salary promotions for example can be seen as a form of incentive system; However,
they are not considered game attributes as they weren’t created with any game
design principle. If they were, they would be terrible ones, as it is the
reason why there are so many bored students at school and so many dispassionate
employees. (Michael Wu, 2012)
We are a “Technology &
Information Management Team” who want to share all the information, the latest
news and the most interesting examples about Gamification with YOU!
